through the usual forms of prayer, he bowed in prayer, he even prayed
more than usual, but it was lip-service only and his soul was not in it.
This condition would continue for a day, or sometimes for two days, and
would then pass of itself. But those days were dreadful. Kasatsky felt
that he was neither in his own hands nor in God's, but was subject
to something else. All he could do then was to obey the starets, to
restrain himself, to undertake nothing, and simply to wait. In general
all this time he lived not by his own will but by that of the starets,
and in this obedience he found a special tranquillity.

So he lived in his first monastery for seven years. At the end of the
third year he received the tonsure and was ordained to the priesthood by
the name of Sergius. The profession was an important event in his inner
life. He had previously experienced a great consolation and spiritual
exaltation when receiving communion, and now when he himself officiated,
the performance of the preparation filled him with ecstatic and deep
emotion. But subsequently that feeling became more and more deadened,
and once when he was officiating in a depressed state of mind he felt
that the influence produced on him by the service would not endure. And
it did in fact weaken till only the habit remained.

In general in the seventh year of his life in the monastery Sergius grew
weary. He had learnt all there was to learn and had attained all there
was to attain, there was nothing more to do and his spiritual drowsiness
increased. During this time he heard of his mother's death and his
sister Varvara's marriage, but both events were matters of indifference
to him. His whole attention and his whole interest were concentrated on
his inner life.

In the fourth year of his priesthood, during which the Bishop had been